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1/26/2008
International CES 2008: HDTV Advancements
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Although there were lots of HDTVs to see at CES, I did not spend much time visiting with the manufacturers. However, on the Sunday before the start of the show, I stopped by the LG.Philips suite and watched a demo of some of the new features they were touting for their line of LCD HDTVs. Here’s a summary: Double Frame Rate Technology—120-Hz ...
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9/13/2007
Hotz Shows How To Use The Internet As The Ultimate Collaboration Tool
George Hotz, as you may know, is the 17-year-old who got his iPhone to work on T-Mobile's network. No small feat. Hotz, who hails from Glen Rock, NJ, which is just a few miles from our office here in Paramus, seems like a guy with a good head on his shoulders. After all, he did take home an award in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)--again, no small feat.But what truly amazes me, and maybe you, too, is the way he went about his task, which by the way, was listed in the news as taking 500 hours. He starts a blog about his project for the...
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It's amazing what young people can do when problem solving and how resourceful they can be. I'm expe...
Tuna -October 08, 2007
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6/18/2007
USB Connectors Hold On Tight
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Several years ago, I wrote a column about USB and its impact on PCs. I wondered then if USB would replace the RS-232 port in industrial products as it was doing in PCs. I received so many comments that I actually wrote a second column on the same subject a couple of issues later. One comment, though, stuck in my mind. A reader said that USB was just not an option for ruggedized products, since you could not secure the connector. Then, the other day, I received a package in the mail from Sealevel Systems (www.sealevel.com). It was a sample of their new SeaI/O-270U isolated 7-port USB hub. A...
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5/16/2007
New! Video Demos on EEPN Web Site
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As editors of EEPN magazine, we get to see lots of great demos of new components and equipment. Some of them are so intriguing that we thought it would be a stellar idea to share them with you, our readers. For this reason, we have designated a place on our web site for posting video demos. The page is not quite ready yet, but when it is, you will be able to select Video Demos from the menu list on the left-hand side of the EEPN home page. Since I didn't want to wait for our web team to launch the new page, I thought I would make the...
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5/13/2007
Putting the PlayStation3 to Work
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Though I've never played a video game on any of the major gaming platforms, I recently purchased a Sony PlayStation 3. Part of the reason I did this was an article I read in IEEE Spectrum magazine last year detailing the phenomenal engineering that went into this platform and the rest of the reason was to tease my 9-year old nephew who's a big time gamer, but doesn't have a PS3. The article in Spectrum, entitled "Expressway to Your Skull," described the interconnections between the PS3's Cell processor, graphics chip and memory (CLICK...
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3/6/2007
Changing Times for Reader Service
Last summer, I got a call from a reader complaining about our reader service program. He had gone onto the EEPN web site, clicked on “Reader Service” and expected to find links to all the information he was looking for. Instead, we asked him to fill out a form and told him that we would forward the information to him by mail. He asked me, “What sense does that make?” And then said, “I need information right away. And by the way, I don’t want to fill out the form every time I visit the site.” His comments got me thinking about reader service and how it might be improved. This year you’ll see how we’ve improved the...
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Sorry to see the RS card go, even though I don't use it as much as I used to. Just a quick suggesti...
keith tarbell -March 29, 2007
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2/12/2007
Dialing for Power
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If you haven’t yet heard the news, National Semiconductor has added six high-frequency buck regulators to its SIMPLE SWITCHER product family. In addition, they have added a “dial” to their online WEBBENCH design tool. Why the dial? All of the new regulators have an adjustable switching frequency, and the dial gives you an easy way to change parameters that are dependent on the frequency, such as size and efficiency. National thinks that novice as well as seasoned power supply designers will benefit from the new tool. ...
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1/16/2007
VMCR Video Disappoints on PC, Shines on PSP
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If you have read my editorial in the December issue of EEPN, you know that I was excited to discover a gadget called a VMCR (Video Memory Card Recorder) at a pre-CES press event I attended in November. I noticed it at the SanDisk booth. Called the V-Mate, it was one of the products at the event that received a 2007 CES Innovation Award. I thought it would be a cool replacement for my aging VCR. I talked...
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12/16/2006
Producing Negawatts of Electricity
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I was invited recently to a briefing on energy efficiency presented by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) in New York City. The purpose of the briefing was to outline the electric power industry’s new approach to energy efficiency. The idea is nothing new, since utilities have been encouraging their customers to use electricity more efficiently since the early 1970s. Energy companies are touting the idea, too. You might have seen the ad by Chevron that states, “We’ve got a huge source of alternative energy all around us. It’s called conservation, and it’s the lowest cost new source of energy we have at hand.” So...
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11/20/2006
Watching TV on Your PC Wherever You Are
TV tuners for PCs have been around for quite some time, but I never really felt a need for one. Then, earlier this year, a gal from Xceive, which makes silicon tuners, sent me a USB-stick TV tuner from one of the companies they deal with. It worked surprisingly well, and after using it for a while, I thought better of TV on the PC. Even though my computer sits in a room with a TV, I found it very convenient to have a program—usually a baseball game—playing in a small window in the upper right corner of the display while I continued working in the remaining space, checking e-mail, surfing the...
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I read with interest in your memory stick that makes your PC a TV, Our company Blue Angel www.chinab...
Mike Barnes -May 04, 2008
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10/15/2006
Problem Solving Strategies
On a recent American Airlines flight, I was looking for a way to pass the time. Knowing that the inflight magazine, AmericanWay, has a Mensa Quiz, I opened to the page and perused the problems. Usually, I can solve the math problems pretty easily, but some of the others take some thought. I looked over the quiz, and saw that four of the ten questions were easy, but I had no idea how to solve the others. One of the questions included a hint: Work Backward. I thought this kind of strange, since I would never consider approaching a problem this way. Usually, when I do this quiz, I can get eight or nine correct, so this particular one...
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As with all problems, it's certainly better to find the solution in two minutes rather than several ...
JD -November 20, 2006
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10/15/2006
Mentoring Future Engineers
I had the opportunity recently to hear Dean Kamen give an historical perspective of FIRST, a program he founded in 1989. If you’re not familiar with FIRST, it’s the organization that sponsors events such as the FIRST Robotics Competition for high-school students and FIRST LEGO League for children 9 to 14 years of age. The thing that struck me is the phenomenal growth this organization has achieved. The robotics competitions have grown from 28 teams in 1992 to 1,125 teams today. In the meantime, according to Kamen, the championship round has outgrown a...
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Joe,
I help to mentor FRC team #1511. This is my third year to be involved in this team. The impact...
Mike O'Brien -October 31, 2006
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7/28/2006
Power Play for Data Centers
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I received a call recently from a representative for a company called Active Power (www.activepower.com ). They wanted to come to our office to talk about a new product targeted at data centers. I wasn’t too keen on meeting with them, since we rarely cover products that are meant to be sold to data centers. Active Power, according to the representative, is the leader in battery-free critical power solutions. After some hemming and hawing, I decided to meet with them. Around the same time, I received an email from a competitor of their’s, Pentadyne Power Corp. (...
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2/5/2006
Startups Fuel Electronics Industry Innovation
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I meet with electronics companies all the time, both the established names and startups whose names you might or might not know. Lately, I've noticed quite an upswing in requests for meetings from the startups, most of which were launched in the depths of the electronics industry recession/depression. Their products and technologies are innovative, sometimes representing a breakthrough in a particular electronics segment. I thought I would briefly introduce these companies. ...
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12/8/2005
Playing the Spam Game
As everyone knows, spam takes a mighty toll on productivity. There's nothing like coming into the office on a Monday morning and wading through hundreds and hundreds of spam e-mail messages to start the day. Dealing with spam usually takes two forms, depending on whether you're in the office or at home. Let's talk about the office first. In my office, we use Lotus Notes. At first, the IT guys took care of spam by filtering it out all on their own. I couldn't tell we had a spam filter at all, since I was receiving lots of spam. But I was assured that at least 80% of the spam was indeed being caught before it reached my mailbox....
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I have the same problem with Lotus at work. At home I use Mozilla Thunderbird, where you mark messag...
Anonymous -December 05, 2007
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11/11/2005
Taking Notes the New-Fashioned Way
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About a year ago, while attending the first ever Digital Life show in New York City, I was introduced to a program called EverNote. This note-taking program was very intriguing to me since I was considering purchasing Microsoft's OneNote program at the time. Since EverNote was free to download from the EverNote site—and still is—I tried out that program and wrote about it in my column in EE Product News. Recently, though, some folks from Microsoft came to visit me at my office and gave me a demo of the latest version of OneNote along with a review copy of the program. It seemed natural...
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11/10/2005
EEPN's 2005 Product Review & Outlook
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Readers of EEPN should by now have in their hands a copy of the 2005 Product Review & Outlook. In this issue, EEPN's editorial staff has chosen products that are among the best or most innovative or most significant in each of 30+ categories that we cover in the magazine. Now it's your chance to add your two cents. Do you agree/disagree with the products that we've chosen? Have you used any of these products? Do you have any feedback you would like to share? If you don't have your printed copy on hand, just click on the November 2005 issue and then click on the supplement to check out the picks....
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10/17/2005
A Free Test of PC Board Manufacturability
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I recently spoke with Tony Breglio and Tony Garramone of Advanced Circuits about their FreeDFM service. I haven't created many (any?) pc boards myself lately, but if you do, it sounds like a service that would be worth your time to check out and may save you lots of time to boot. The company notes that 20-25% of pc board orders go on hold due to a variety of errors—costing much in the way of time—and this service is meant to alleviate the problem. Just point your browser at ...
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10/2/2005
Playing Around with Podcasting
A while back, I thought I would try my hand at creating a podcast for design engineers. It would contain a little bit of news, a little bit of new products and anything else I thought might be of interest. Since this was for internal purposes only, I grabbed the nearest thing in sight, which happened to be a tape recorder, as in standard cassette tape. After the demo was finished, the tape was easy enough to pass around the office—most people still can play cassette tapes, either in the car or at home. And if not, I was able to loan them the tape recorder. ...
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I HAVE BEEN CONSIDERING "NERO", BUT I HAVE "DATA-BECKER" SOFT-WARE WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE SUPERIOR...
Anonymous -October 11, 2005
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8/7/2005
Fiber to the Home – Part 2
In the May issue of EE Product News, I wrote a column entitled "Fiber to the Curb" and noted that I had seen Verizon workers installing fiber optic cable along the utility poles in my backyard. The first response I received to that column was from an engineer at Tellabs informing me that Verizon was not installing "Fiber to the Curb" but "Fiber to the Home." With "Fiber to the Home," the fiber runs all the way to the house and is terminated there at a box. Tellabs is the provider of that equipment to Verizon. Tellabs also has a Fiber to the Curb (FTTC) system that runs fiber to the customer's backyard, and then some electronics...
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Fiber Optic Cabling -Training - Technical Support (Training) - Information Web Site - - http://fiber...
sezer -May 01, 2008
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